By the latter half of the fourteenth century, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) had assumed its rightful place in the arts curriculum of most medieval European universities, though it seems only M.A. students were required to attend lectures on it. But there had in fact been much interest in the work since Albert the Great first commented on the entire text in the previous century, so that by the time it appeared in the university statute books, there was already a tradition of commentary on it going back several generations.

In commenting on the works of Aristotle, most arts masters saw their task as twofold, viz., that of explaining the littera or literal meaning of Aristotle's text, and then (usually in a separate work) of identifying and trying to resolve the philosophical questions raised by it. In the case of N.E., the latter task provided ample opportunity for the master to address conflicts between Aristotle and other authors whose works were regarded as authoritative in ethics. This would have included not just philosophers from Greek and Roman antiquity available in Latin translation, but also the Bible, Church Fathers, and earlier medieval commentators on N.E. such as Albert and Thomas Aquinas. In the Latin West there had always been a tension, or perhaps uneasy alliance, between Christian ethics and its pagan forbears, but most commentators regarded Aristotle as having important things to say in moral philosophy, and the belief that Aristotle's views, and especially his arguments for them, should be seen as complementing Christian doctrine was widespread.

Introduction

In A Hundred Years of Philosophy, John Passmore remarks that “it is a salutary reflection that had I written this book in 1800 I should probably have dismissed Berkeley and Hume in a few lines, in order to concentrate my attention on Dugald Stewart – and that in 1850 the centre of my interest would have shifted to Sir William Hamilton” (Passmore (1957), 7–8). It is likewise salutary to reflect that had this text been prepared a hundred years ago, its editor would have seen no need for a chapter on emerging trends in Anglo-American philosophers’ reception of Aristotelian ethics. Aristotle's prestige and influence had sunk so low that any prediction of a significant recovery within that editor's lifetime would have been dismissed as wishful thinking.

Even fifty years later, after the 1958 publication of Elizabeth Anscombe's “Modern Moral Philosophy,” no one could have predicted that within a few decades, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (henceforth N.E.) would once again be viewed as an important resource for contemporary normative theory, applied ethics, or meta-ethics. Had our imaginary editor reviewed the comments of leading figures in Anglo-American ethics in the first half of the twentieth century, he or she would have concluded that any future interest in Aristotle's ethics would be strictly antiquarian. G. E. Moore led the assault in 1903, criticizing Aristotle's analysis of the virtues as resting upon a “gross absurdity” (Moore [1903] 1993). H. A. Prichard lamented the “deep sense of dissatisfaction produced by a close reading of Aristotle's ethics,” its author having failed to realize that “virtue is no basis for morality” (Prichard (1912), 33). Dewey complained that Aristotle confused acquired and native dispositions, leading “worldlywise Aristotles of today” to suppose that contemporary social institutions were “so grounded in immutable nature that effort to change them is foolish,” and elsewhere described Aristotle's ethics as “remote and empty” (Dewey ([1922] 1983), 78; Dewey ([1929] 1988), 225). R. B. Perry described Aristotelian essentialism as “a bottomless pit of nonsense,” and dismissed Aristotle's definition of happiness as “ambiguous redundancy” (Perry ([1929] 1954), 45, 75). W. D. Ross used more circumspect language in arguing for “reconsideration” (meaning “rejection”) both of Aristotle's account of deliberate action and of the philosophical adequacy of his analysis of good (Ross (1939), 205, 253).

The traditional view of the relationship between the moral theories of Aristotle and Kant is that the two were fundamentally opposed to each other. Kant not only radically rejected Aristotle's eudaimonism, but he was also opposed to virtue as a fundamental ethical category. From the Aristotelian point of view, it has been argued that Kant's formalism and rigorism, his emphasis on pure rationality and eternal or unchangeable law, leaves no room for human flourishing of the sort that Aristotle had in mind. More recently, there have been several attempts to show that the opposition between Kantian and Aristotelian moral theory is neither as radical nor as important as traditionally thought. I would like, in this essay, to try to defend important aspects of the traditional theory. There is, I will argue, a fundamental difference between Aristotelian approaches and Kant's own view. Furthermore, I will suggest that the attempts to minimize the differences give up some of the deepest aspirations of Kantian idealism.

This is not to deny that the Aristotle–Kant relation is sufficiently complex to make it impossible to do complete justice to it in a relatively short essay like this one. I will therefore limit myself to two of the themes that I consider most important. These are Kant's view of the problem of eudaimonism and egoism and its relation to Aristotle; and the similarities and differences between Aristotle's and Kant's virtues. To this end, I first analyze Kant's explicit statements about Aristotelian ethics and show that Kant, at the very least, did not consider himself as an Aristotelian, but thought that he had provided a radical alternative to it (section iii). Secondly, I discuss some of the attempts to make Kant's moral theory compatible with eudaimonsim of some sort (section iv). Thirdly (section v), I attempt to disentangle Kant's various statements about virtue and attempt to situate his moral thought more precisely within the tradition of the history of virtue ethics. This is followed by a short evaluation of what I take to be the significance of my findings.

Introduction

The earliest known Latin version of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics was produced from the Greek by an anonymous translator in the twelfth century. This version, however, was incomplete and it was not until about 1246 that a complete version was translated by Robert Grosseteste. By 1260, the revised version of William of Moerbeke was available and circulated widely over the following decades. Thus, Aristotle's text became known to Latin readers piecemeal over the span of a generation and did not begin to have a serious impact on moral philosophy in the Latin West until the second half of the thirteenth century. Once the naturalistic account of virtue contained in the Nicomachean Ethics became known, it significantly changed the philosophical landscape. Prior to the recovery of Aristotle's text, Latin thinkers showed little interest in naturalistic accounts of moral goodness, focusing instead on the necessity of divine assistance for the morally good life. This theological orientation was generally attributed to the influence of Augustine in the medieval monastic schools. It was not until the revival of Aristotelian naturalism by Albertus Magnus that the Nicomachean Ethics began to exert a philosophical influence in the medieval universities.

The reception of Aristotle's moral philosophy in the thirteenth century, then, marks a watershed in the history of Western ethics. Yet, this development raises the question of the extent to which Augustine's approach to moral philosophy was influenced by or departed from the naturalistic account of human happiness found in the Nicomachean Ethics. If the theological ethics of the medieval monastic schools was dominated by an Augustinian approach, then determining Augustine's place in the history of the reception of Aristotle's text is crucial. Moreover, it has been recently argued that Aristotle's account of virtue and eudaimonia was available in the twelfth century from sources other than the text of the Nicomachean Ethics itself, notably Aristotle's logical works and Cicero's De inventione. As some of these works were available to Augustine in the fourth century, the Augustinian synthesis of the early medieval schools may have already incorporated elements of Aristotle's ethics.

Writing the reception history of the Nicomachean Ethics (N.E.) in Hellenistic philosophy is, arguably, an impossible task. The problem is not simply the paucity of evidence. We have no direct citations tying any doctrine discussed by Epicurean, Stoic, or Academic philosophers to views explicitly defended by Aristotle in the N.E., nor any direct evidence for familiarity in the Cyrenaic or Megarian schools. For all the evidence shows, Aristotle's N.E. was not cited by any philosopher outside the Peripatos in the period from the death of Alexander (323 bc) to the year Cicero wrote De Finibus (45 bc). That brings us almost all the way up to the year that is conventionally considered the end of the Hellenistic period, 31 bc. Even in the Lyceum Aristotle's voice falls strangely silent after the death of his successor Theophrastus of Eresus in c. 287 bc.

The lack of any direct reference proving that the N.E. was read in the Hellenistic period is perplexing in light of its profound impact on later ethical theory. But it need not trouble us if we can find strong reasons to infer that particular features of Stoic or Epicurean theories are best explained as developments of Aristotle's ethics. Thus, David Furley has argued that Epicurus’ account of the voluntary attempts to solve problems arising from Aristotle's discussion of responsibility for character in N.E. iii.5 (Furley (1967), 184–209). Similarly, A. A. Long has maintained that the Stoic category of “things in accordance with nature” and the attendant distinction between appropriate acts and successful acts develop essentially Aristotelian insights while equipping nameless Aristotelian categories with convenient labels. According to Long, “The Stoics borrowed many concepts, sometimes altering their language, from the Peripatetics and consciously developed or diverged from others…Stoic ethics cannot be completely understood without reference to Aristotle” (Long (1968)). Brad Inwood has reached a similar conclusion regarding Stoic action theory: “The early Stoic theory of human and animal action was influenced by Aristotle as much as was Epicurus’.” More recently, Terence Irwin has revived the late Hellenistic view that the disagreements between Stoic and Aristotelian ethics are less profound than critics tend to recognize. Irwin (1990) resists Antiochus’ view that the Stoics are merely recasting Aristotelian points in “violently paradoxical” language, for according to Irwin the Stoics are providing an important service by making clear Aristotle's true commitments.